The Dutch Attorney General to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has concluded that workers at a company that makes vegetarian meatballs, fall under the scope of the Dutch mandatory industry pension fund for the meat industry.

The long-running battle is of a similar ilk to other recent cases in the Netherlands regarding the enrolment of workers into mandatory industry pension schemes, for example, Booking.com.

This most recent case involves the German-originated company, Livekindly, under its brand Like Meat operating in the Netherlands, and Stichting Bedrijfstakpensioenfonds voor Vlees, Vleeswaren, Gemaksvoeding en Pluimveevlees – for those working in meat, meat products, convenience food and poultry (Vlep). Like Meat produces vegan meat substitutes at its facility in Oss, The Netherlands.

In 2016, Vlep initially assessed that Like Meat did not fall under its remit; Like Meat instead has a pension scheme for its workers with ASR. However, in 2021, following a re-investigation Vlep ruled that Like Meat does fall in its remit, and this should date back retrospectively to 2018. However, Vlep said it could provide a fixed-term exemption for the period 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2021 to avoid double accrual of workers’ pensions. Between 2016 and 2021, Like Meat's operations and production processes did not change.

Like Meat challenged this legally and in December 2022 a judge in a subdistrict court ruled that workers at Like Meat should not be enrolled in Vlep. However, the Court of Appeal overturned this decision in May 2023. Following the Attorney General’s recommendation this month, the case will next be heard at the Supreme Court in autumn.

The Attorney General’s conclusion, which aligns with the Court of Appeal, is that Dutch parlance no longer understands meatballs, hamburgers and other ‘meat-named products’ as only containing meat but also vegetarian and/or vegan variants. Furthermore, it was concluded that Like Meat falls specifically under the ‘convenience food industry’ header of the pension scheme, despite Like Meat arguing against this as it produces food to cook at home.

Utrecht University professor and lawyer at GMW, Hans van Meerten has questioned whether the Dutch system of mandatory pension schemes for specific industries is compliant with EU law.

“Like Meat was a German food producer and now it has been forced to participate in the Dutch mandatory pension fund and it doesn’t have a choice to choose another one. This is a lack of freedom of services. The question is, how does it interact with European rules? It is almost three years ago since I raised a complaint with the European Commission on this and I still haven’t received an answer,” he said.

Furthermore, Van Meerten criticised the continuation of this system in the Dutch Future Pensions Act: “The most bizarre thing in the Future Pension Act is this completely outdated system remains in place. This division into sectors, meat, travel, health etc, this completely outdated division of sectors is still in the Future Pensions Act. If you really want to build a future-proof system don’t start with old-fashioned, outdated division into sectors.”

---